Intolerable Cruelty

When I was a young man, I veered into the Republican camp. After voting for Humphrey in 1968, I voted for Nixon in 1972 and Ford in 1976. My New Deal liberal father almost disowned me. He hated Nixon with a passion reserved for former SS members, especially after Watergate. But even worse, I worked for and campaigned for Reagan in 1980. I thought Carter did a poor job as President. I did not regret voting for Reagan nor my invitation to his inauguration, although I did not attend. I turned Democrat in 1992, with Bill Clinton, and remained such until the present day. My father never forgave me for my apostasy. I know now, with the benefit of hindsight, I was sorely misguided. I regret all of it, because Dad was right when he told me, "Every bit of beneficial legislation for the people comes from Democrats." That has not changed, even though Republicans are selling a different brand of Kool-Aid.

I continue to be astonished by the cruelty of this administration.

The rounding up of immigrants in the fields, in places of employment, and in their homes. People hiding and afraid to go to church, and under the advice of prelates, being forgiven for not coming to worship. In the eyes of the Catholic Church, one risks damnation for not following the dictates of the holy bishops: to come to confession, to come to prayer, to take communion. Unable to work, to pray, to walk freely in the streets recalls the horrors of the police states from which they escaped to America.

Hunger is growing in America. PBS and NPR are not the only ones losing their federal funding. Food banks feeding the poor and needy will be losing their federal monies; Medicaid will no longer be available for many. Draconian work requirements for the disabled augur poorly for them. The President wishes to strip many naturalized citizens of their citizenship. Reminiscent of the Nuremberg Laws, this quest is frightening.

Will no one in Congress challenge this denigration of our laws and the Constitution? Are senators and congresspeople so afraid of losing their parking spots at National Airport?

The United States has shined through the presence of immigrants. From the earliest days, and especially in the 19th century, until the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1924, the United States had unrestricted immigration. Until that discriminatory act, anyone without a communicable disease could come. Today, of course, that is not possible, but our doors should be open to non-criminals, the border should be secure, and through a liberal vetting process, people should be allowed in to fill jobs that are open.

Scientific funding to the National Institutes of Health, the firing without cause of essential federal employees, in the name of government efficiency, strikes me like the firings on The Apprentice. The cutoff of funding for Radio Free Europe, giving hope of the American ideal (what happened to that?) to many in the unfree world. The harming of our allies in Canada and Mexico by placing tariffs on them is basically unconscionable. They are not the Chinese, competing for hegemony with us; they are our friends whose economies are placed in jeopardy by their largest trading partner. These inflationary tariffs will wreak havoc on Canadian and Mexican employment and will inflate the price of goods here in America, according to a substantial majority of non-partisan economists.

It risks the devaluation of the dollar and investment markets and U.S. debt. The U.S. dollar has had the luxury of being the world's reserve currency, and if that is changed, we will lose control of markets and erase the benefit of being able to monetize debt by increasing the money supply. Countries that do not have this control must obey different rules, like balancing their budgets. A balanced budget here? The chance of that is smaller than finding alien life on the moon.

Pure Trump transactionalism is not the basis for international relations. While it is true governments act in their own national interest, not recognizing that long-term national interest cannot be trumped by anger and simply short-term political popularity seeking. If the long term is ignored because of misplaced petulance, the national interest is not well served.

America at a Crossroads

t’s been a while since I’ve written. I feel badly for my recent silence. Depression, helplessness, and frustration at my lack of a bigger platform have kept me quiet. But for whatever it’s worth, here goes:

Americans are shocked and amazed at what is happening to our country. To those who voted for Mr. Trump—whether because you felt left behind, believed promises that inflation and foreign wars would be solved on day one, wanted lower taxes, were frustrated by empty shelves, or worried about job automation—I have to say: you were misled.

These promises were part of a Trump playbook long known. Ask the creditors left unpaid in Atlantic City, the students at Trump University, or the buyers of Trump-branded steaks and coins. Trump is our 21st-century PT Barnum, but he doesn’t believe a sucker is born every minute—he knows it’s every second. Compared to Trump, Ponzi, Barnum, and other snake oil salesmen look like a junior high baseball team facing the New York Yankees. He’s a major-league confidence man.

(Apologies to the Bronx Bombers, a team I’ve adored for ages. I could have used another analogy, but I’m tired.)

Most Americans who cast votes for Trump had their reasons. There was the supposed economic crisis (that really wasn’t), the “America going down the drain” argument (it wasn’t), the unsecured border, the “Joe Biden deception,” and the disastrous debate. The last-minute selection of a Democratic candidate who wasn’t the product of the primaries, but was instead anointed by Joe Biden, left many feeling the process was unfair and uninspiring. It was not the Democrats’ finest hour. Joe, intoxicated by power, didn’t want to go. He should have kept his original promise not to seek a second term. At least then, Democrats would have had a fighting chance against a master manipulator of fear.

Now, we face a form of authoritarianism unprecedented in our 250-year-old republic. There’s an attack on higher education—yes, it needs reform, especially to address extreme left-wing antisemitism—but it’s being done with a sledgehammer, not thoughtful policy. We see the militarization of policing, the degradation of the civil service, and the panicked rehiring of those fired without thought for the consequences. Foreign aid workers, whose tiny fraction of the budget did so much for our world image and influence, are gone—costing us dearly in goodwill and, as Bill Gates warned, in the lives of thousands of children.

Now we see unbridled corruption: a president blatantly enriching himself and his family at taxpayer expense. We see the violation of the Constitution’s emoluments clause, with the acceptance of a $400 million airplane “gift” to the U.S. government, destined for Trump’s library—possibly in Miami, God help us. We see the HHS Secretary, an unqualified anti-vaccine advocate, firing qualified medical professionals from the vaccine board. RFK, Jr.—a scoundrel and a liar—fits right in with the dramatis personae of the Trump administration: the drunkard Pete Hegseth, the clueless Linda McMahon, the silly Kash Patel undermining the FBI as not even the rigid, constipated James Comey could, who himself undermined Hillary Clinton’s campaign.

The most frightening part? This president is only six months into his term, and there is no one to restrain him. Certainly not the Republican Congress, whose members are terrified of losing their primaries—and their parking spaces at National Airport. The rest abandoned ship during the first term, wrote books, and are now glad they’re not there. But now, the ship of state may sink—with all of us aboard.

WHY SCARS TRAVEL DOWN THROUGH GENERATIONS

Today is Yom HaShoah.  April 24^th. Holocaust Remembrance Day.  I know there is a great concern about the present generation not remembering the unspeakable crimes of the 3d Reich and of their collaborators.

I have written previously how the war affected my family, my relationship with my father, who was permanently scarred by the experience of losing his parents, his sisters and brothers and the story of how he brought his two young sisters, and 21 other survivors from his hometown to America.  His mother, sisters and brothers were deported  to Auschwitz among the other Hungarian Jews when Adolf Eichman arrived in Budapest in a final paroxysm of Nazi hatred, during the spring of 1944, after the Hungarian Nazi aligned government collapsed.   There they faced the line of selection, to the left gas, to the right, work yourself to a starvation induced death.  The war was lost, but Hitler figured he could still finish the job of cleansing Europe of Jews (Judenrein).  Some 500,000 to 600,000 Hungarian men, women and children   were hastily deported to Auschwitz, within approximately three months.   The last Jews of Europe that still had not been under the German boot until then. Many of them were gassed upon arrival and immediately thrown into the blazing crematoria.   I know that my grandmother and other aunts, uncles and cousins joined them in their ride to death.  Some, more able bodied and young were spared to work. Among them, my aunt Sherry.

Near the barracks was a gallows with three prisoners hanging, frozen in death. Elie Wiesel came from the same hometown as my grandparents.  Someone asked him where was God?  “He is there hanging from the gallows,” he said.

Below is a picture of my Aunt Sherry, a gifted artist in line fourth from the left, in her uniform.  Ultimately, my father rescued her and 21 others from the DP camp operated by the British, after the liberation.   She was 60 pounds, her brain inflamed.  She came to America in 1946, among the first wave of DPs (displaced persons).  The photo was taken by the SS and is present in the records of Yad Vashem in Israel, in its Auschwitz album.   She has passed on, but was a sensitive, loving mother to the autistic son she had after marrying a man who had also lost his wife and children, and yet had later served in combat in the south Pacific with the US Army.  She never lost her Jewish faith, although one could easily question why.  She did many oil paintings when she arrived, including a portrait of me and my mother below. I had other lovely aunts who were more fun but none so talented yet tormented or had suffered as much.

My father, having come to America in 1923, went home each year until 1939 but when the war came and he could no longer visit  nor introduce his bride (my mother) to his parents or bring insulin to his diabetic father.  He tried in vain to get them to America, but after the immigration and nationality act of 1924, it was no longer possible.  His father was fortunate, dad said, dying of diabetes, saving him from the indignities of being gassed and burned.  Dad said, “if God were so powerful, and he was bloodthirsty so I reject him.  And if he was not powerful enough to stop the madness, he does not exist.”  Yet Dad still went to synagogue on the holidays and ran his hotel for Jewish, mostly religious guests.

People ask me if I was affected.  Well, yes I was.  My father ran a hotel in upstate New York from 1951-1971.  Many of the people there were survivors, and I grew up among them.  Many did not want to talk about their  horrifying experiences, many did.  I listened to them and absorbed their stories.  It was a terrible time to be young and innocent and to learn such things.

 

American Boobs and Dolts

"On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron"

 

H.L. Mencken. July 26, 1920 The Baltimore Sun

 

Trump’s wrecking ball is doing a pretty good job on my retirement portfolio, and I suppose on the portfolios of many other senior citizens.

 

The notion that tariffs will reinvigorate a 20^th century manufacturing base in a country that has moved to a 21^st century service economy is not only unrealistic, but threatens US leadership around the world, the status of the Dollar as the world reserve currency, along with the freedom to dictate world prices by manipulating the value of the dollar.  This is a luxury the Chinese and the EU would embrace, if they could.  Where is the labor force going to be obtained?  Who is going to pay for the new factories?  The US has declined since World War II in its manufacturing base over a period of 80 years.  How will all that come back in two?

Where will the skilled workers come from?  How will the US consumer deal with the inflation and the shortage of goods?  

 

By the time Trump finishes his hare-brained schemes and his group of cabinet twats have finished their Signal chats, the stock market will have surrendered another thousand points, as trillions of wealth vanish in a puff of Elon Musk’s exploding rocket ships.  

 

Musk wants to populate the red planet.   Rover photos show an airless desert, unfit for human life.   Musk should leave now for Mars to colonize it in preparation for the explosion of the sun which scientists predict will roast the Earth in about 5 billion years hence, but also will probably roast Mars as well.  Go Elon!  Take a fleet of your panel falling off ugly exploding cyber trucks with you.

 

Meanwhile our angry FOX host SECDEF parades around spreading “warrior culture” to career, professional, usually West Point or Annapolis prodigies who arose through an intensely competitive military meritocracy to become 4 star flag officers who now have to keep their mouths shut and their profiles low to avoid being fired by an abusive, petulant, alcohol-challenged dufus.

 

In the White House, Trump is Trump vacillating between one policy or another.  Tariff or no tariff?

Support for our allies or not? Defend NATO or not?  Cozy up to Vladimir or not?  Pissed of at him or not?   Deport everyone or not?  It’s like having that slinky spring that your parents gave you and wondering where it would go. Deal or no deal? A kind of Howie Mandel show on Elephant juice.

 

All this begs the question of whether the elitists are right.  The lip service paid by politicians about the wisdom of the American people and how smart they are, how they usually make the right choice in the end?  I wonder how many people in the congress believe that pablum.   Not wanting to insult their constituents, the most ignorant of whom have elected the most ignorant of congressmen and senators. I mean these are people who do not pass the Jay Leno questions.   

 

Q. “Who is George Washington?”

 

A. “Mayor of New York.”

 

Q. “Who was the first president?”

 

A. “Bush.”

 

Q. “The Father or the Son?”

 

A. “Was there more than one.?”

 

You get the picture.   If Alexander Hamilton was right the above is proof of that.  Only when Hamilton was around people actually read newspapers and books and did not get their information from Tik Tok.  And he, the great genius who created our financial and banking system was not ever president because Thomas Jefferson’s views of the common man rang truer to the emotional appeal of the public, who may not have liked Hamilton’s persona.  But Jefferson was a spendthrift and Hamilton was killed in a duel on the banks of the Hudson by Aaron Burr who Hamilton had called a “dangerous” man after years of political rivalry, supporting his own rival, Jefferson against Burr.

 

Politicians do not duel anymore; perhaps they should.  Can you imagine Joe Biden and Donald Trump facing off at forty paces with muskets?  The man who cheats at golf versus the man who stayed too long.

Why We Need Better Angels

 

I’ve been trying to figure out what to write about these first weeks of the Trump administration and I must admit that I am dumbfounded.  Where are the better angels of American nature?

 

The idea of a disbanded USAID flies in the face of every principle of not only US soft power, and influence, but optics..  Although there have been numerous instances of fraud and abuse, closing the agency is not the solution.  Moreover, the firings of inspectors general aggravates the potential for skullduggery.

 

USAID should be reformed, not closed.  Foreign aid is an essential component in the exercise of our power and influence in the world.   The abandonment of it will lead to Russia or China stepping into the void.  Vacuums only work in Hoovers.

It is not certain that the State Department can do a better job; seems like Marco Rubio has enough on his plate, like diplomacy, world peace, embassies, and foreign policy.

 

After World War II, the Marshall plan bankrolled the recovery of a devastated Europe, the tattered remnants of 12 years of bloodletting and destruction unparalleled in the world history.

Countries like France, Greece and Turkey were in ruins and Germany, nothing but bombed out cities and starving people.  

 

This post war time was “a big beautiful,” opportunity, for Stalin to step in and expand the Soviet Union, an entity at the time that struck fear in the heart of every anti-communist. It was a time of national hysteria.  A time when Winston Churchill came to America as a guest of Truman and made his famous 1947 remarks in Fulton Missouri: “From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended on the continent.”

 

Churchill knew that Europe needed help to recover from the bitter economic devastation of World War, just as he knew Britain needed help to fight Hitler.

 

Various plans of people like Henry Morgenthau, Jr., FDR’s treasury secretary, understandably wanted to deindustrialize Germany and morph it into a strictly agricultural society of small farmers, incapable of ever waging war again.  He looked at the interregnum between World War I and II and determined that Germany would repeat its militaristic past, if allowed to reindustrialize.  This plan, very controversial, was scrapped.  Good thing it was.

 

Harry Truman and Dean Acheson understood that foreign aid to Europe would be essential for American security as well as a counterbalance to the malign forces of Soviet Communism.  It would help contain communism, the theory of the earlier great statesman George Kennan.

 

Foreign aid in 1945 was a peacetime extension of the Rooseveltian “great arsenal of democracy” that kept Britain in the war against Hitler.  The post war world order of pax Americana kept great powers away from war for 70 years.

 

Imagine if Lend Lease and aid to Great Britain in 1940 had been cancelled when England fought alone?  Imagine had Donald Trump been president in 1940? Or that other populist America Firster, Charles Lindbergh?   If Donald Trump had been president in 1945?  

 

Now, having said that, I think Donald Trump will not destroy the Union.  I do not think he will send out black shirted secret police in jackboots to knock on doors in the middle of the night to drag away political opponents.  I do not think he will shut down newspapers and arrest journalists.  He may sue them.  He’s very good at suing people, and it will take resources to combat him, but there are powerful forces growing against Trumpism; the courts will challenge his illegalities, despite the upside-down flags of ideologues like Justice Alito.

 

The Democrats are in disarray after a disastrous election.  Now they have to consider why that happened.  Was it the message?  Was it disinformation?  Was it social media?  Was it that people get their information from unverified sources?  Was it that people felt left behind?  Was it $9.00 for eggs?  Was it the decline of local journalism?  Was it a poor Democratic candidate? Was it incumbency fatigue?  Was it Why We Need Better Angels.

 

I’ve been trying to figure out what to write about these first weeks of the Trump administration and I must admit that I am dumbfounded.  Where are the better angels of American nature?

 

The idea of a disbanded USAID flies in the face of every principle of not only US soft power, and influence, but optics..  Although there have been numerous instances of fraud and abuse, closing the agency is not the solution.  Moreover, the firings of inspectors general aggravates the potential for skullduggery.

 

USAID should be reformed, not closed.  Foreign aid is an essential component in the exercise of our power and influence in the world.   The abandonment of it will lead to Russia or China stepping into the void.  Vacuums only work in Hoovers.

It is not certain that the State Department can do a better job; seems like Marco Rubio has enough on his plate, like diplomacy, world peace, embassies, and foreign policy.

 

After World War II, the Marshall plan bankrolled the recovery of a devastated Europe, the tattered remnants of 12 years of bloodletting and destruction unparalleled in the world history.

Countries like France, Greece and Turkey were in ruins and Germany, nothing but bombed out cities and starving people.  

 

This post war time was “a big beautiful,” opportunity, for Stalin to step in and expand the Soviet Union, an entity at the time that struck fear in the heart of every anti-communist. It was a time of national hysteria.  A time when Winston Churchill came to America as a guest of Truman and made his famous 1947 remarks in Fulton Missouri: “From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended on the continent.”

 

Churchill knew that Europe needed help to recover from the bitter economic devastation of World War, just as he knew Britain needed help to fight Hitler.

 

Various plans of people like Henry Morgenthau, Jr., FDR’s treasury secretary, understandably wanted to deindustrialize Germany and morph it into a strictly agricultural society of small farmers, incapable of ever waging war again.  He looked at the interregnum between World War I and II and determined that Germany would repeat its militaristic past, if allowed to reindustrialize.  This plan, very controversial, was scrapped.  Good thing it was.

 

Harry Truman and Dean Acheson understood that foreign aid to Europe would be essential for American security as well as a counterbalance to the malign forces of Soviet Communism.  It would help contain communism, the theory of the earlier great statesman George Kennan.

 

Foreign aid in 1945 was a peacetime extension of the Rooseveltian “great arsenal of democracy” that kept Britain in the war against Hitler.  The post war world order of pax Americana kept great powers away from war for 70 years.

 

Imagine if Lend Lease and aid to Great Britain in 1940 had been cancelled when England fought alone?  Imagine had Donald Trump been president in 1940? Or that other populist America Firster, Charles Lindbergh?   If Donald Trump had been president in 1945?  

 

Now, having said that, I think Donald Trump will not destroy the Union.  I do not think he will send out black shirted secret police in jackboots to knock on doors in the middle of the night to drag away political opponents.  I do not think he will shut down newspapers and arrest journalists.  He may sue them.  He’s very good at suing people, and it will take resources to combat him, but there are powerful forces growing against Trumpism; the courts will challenge his illegalities, despite the upside-down flags of ideologues like Justice Alito.

 

The Democrats are in disarray after a disastrous election.  Now they have to consider why that happened.  Was it the message?  Was it disinformation?  Was it social media?  Was it that people get their information from unverified sources?  Was it that people felt left behind?  Was it $9.00 for eggs?  Was it the decline of local journalism?  Was it a poor Democratic candidate? Was it incumbency fatigue?  Was it DEI?  Did Biden stay too long?  Biden did get some things right.  But people do not like feeble leaders.  Biden gave that impression at the end.

 

 

Was it that they lied to us about him?  Take your pick.  Maybe all of the above. The list is not exhaustive.

 

Let’s see what Trump does. He has hit the ground running.  I suspect this term will shape up just like the first term anyway.  Largely Incompetent.  People forget. Memories are short. Trump does understand mass psychology.  Reptilian self-interest, the appeal to fear.  That people do not give a fig about others, only themselves.  And yes, there are people like that, but there are many who are not.  

 

Those with better angels.

 

2024 Ends with mixed reviews.

This is a funny time of year.   The season is supposed to inspire joy, and sometimes it does.  Other times it produces anxiety and fear.   The fear of impending mortality and illness. Living in a fundamentally uncaring universe.  If we do not care about ourselves, no one else does.  The difference between belief and knowledge are two different things.  Faith is belief in the unprovable, knowledge is based upon fact.  Ergo, the difference between the increasing irreconcilability between science and religion.  Religion requires faith.  For those that have faith, life might be easier, but perhaps delusional.  Whatever floats your boat.

We had faith Joe Biden was ok, but facts proved otherwise.  The knowledge was hidden from us by his handlers, to the detriment of the Democratic party and of the nation.

Joe Biden is clearly decrepit, and in that condition, condemned the Democratic party to at least two years in the wilderness, now either hoping that Trump fails, or that if he succeeds, not justifying their misgivings about a corrupt individual slithering by, further enriching himself and his minions. Father time has not been kind to Biden.  A basically decent man, suffering enormous personal losses and pain, finally achieving his goal of becoming President of the United States, passing some important legislation such as the CHIPS act, the Inflation Reduction Act, and pushing the nation toward a greener future with a world-beating, full employment economy.  But Biden diminished his legacy by staying around too long and even provoking controversy by pardoning his son.  Given the circumstances of a vengeful successor though, it is an understandable move.  What father would want to see his son go to prison for what Hunter did?  He is not a mass murderer or even a regular murderer-- just a confused, possibly advantage-seeking dilletante recovering addict whose father happened to be the most powerful man on the planet.  Still, the GOP MAGA groups who have condemned him, have their fair share of black sheep and hypocrites.  We know who they are, so let’s not go there.

 

Those of us who hope that Trump does not fail for good of the nation, are cautiously pessimistic about the future, but as Al Smith once famously said, “let’s look at the record.”  Will an unbound second term be better?

Governments do not run well without bureaucrats, or as Trump and Bannon (both convicts) would have it, “The Deep State.”  We need sailors to sail the ship.

On the foreign front, Biden has given pretty much everything the Ukrainians need to fight the Russians.  Perhaps some of the aid could have come earlier, but it is not certain it would have made a difference in this long slog of attrition.  The West is using the Ukrainians as proxies to elide Putin’s revanchist dreams of restoring the Soviet Union.  That is not going to happen, but his desperation moves are quite annoying.  If he gobbles up Ukraine, he will be stuck with a very angry populace, not unlike other occupation forces and perhaps continual guerilla warfare.  The Russian economy is suffering, and Putin knows it; so in desperation, he is using North Korean troops to fight his battles, probably to avoid draft riots led by Russian mothers not wanting their sons fed into a “meat grinder,” already the cause of what US and UK intelligence estimates of 700,000 Russians killed and wounded.  Europeans need to step it up if Trump backs off.  The German and French economies are not in good shape, but they need to quickly rearm to ensure European stability.  They are more worried about Europe than Trump who, for the time being, is concerned fulfilling his promise to deport dog and cat eating Haitians, who, among others, are polluting American blood, whatever that is.

In the Middle East, Israel has shown that it is a true warrior nation.  The exploding pager—walkie talkie offensive, the decimation of Hezbollah, the take down of Iran, the targeted assassinations of crucial terrorist leadership shows who the superpower is in the neighborhood.  This after many years of fear among Jews that Israel was on the edge of destruction, demonstrated by the weakness of the October7th Hamas attacks. Things might be on the upswing.

So let’s watch the fireworks on Biscayne Bay and herald in a better 2025.

 

 

 

 

American Reptile.

 

 

Someone said that Kamala Harris did not do enough to pass the message to voters.  The problem was that she did, but it was the wrong message.  And here in Florida, prominent democrats are trying float ideas attempting to revive a moribund party.  At this stage of the game, turning Florida blue is a Sisyphean enterprise. Democrats, let’s roll that rock up the hill anyway. Apathy is the worst enemy of democracy.

 

The woke mentality of the left was given a severe thrashing and it was the perception of most voters that they had, rightly, enough of cancel culture, with universities cancelling those of opposing points of view from the traditional left, DEI culture and the general feeling, among other things, that some trans rights were intruding on both traditional culture and common sense.

 

The Trump campaign hammered video of a clearly masculine, hairy, arm-pitted, grotesquely tattooed trans basketball player, twice the size of the opposition flexing his/her muscles to a group of befuddled, intimidated girls.  This was a blatant, but effective call to baser voter instincts. But that is what Trump does. Reptilian arguments stoke fear.

 

It really does not take too much thought to understand that trans women do not have the same physical attributes of female athletes, and that thought was conveyed at the ballot box. Sally playing with George (Georgina) is not playing well in flyover country or in Florida (fly to country.)

 

Of course, that is an exaggeration and an emotional argument which many believe would discriminate against people with alternative lifestyles.  That discrimination should not be countenanced.

 

Additionally, the pro-abortion movement was not sufficiently thought of as a reason for people to abandon their feelings about paying $8 for eggs, instead of $4.00 no matter how grassfed or organic they be.  And a majority did not care about Trump’s mendacity, sexual abuse, and misogyny.  Nor did they care about threats to democracy or the attempted coup on January 6, 2021.  

 

They cared about the border for sure.  Earlier generations of immigrants always became “American” enough to reject later generations.  It’s history. American history.  Chinese, Japanese, Italians, Irish, Jews all suffered rejection at first.  Did they threaten jobs of the people already here? Probably.  But America thrived with immigrants and will do so again.  Just keep the criminals out.  Trump mischaracterized immigrants to his advantage.  People did not believe Kamala’s protestations. She bore the brunt of the MAGA attack and bore the responsibility for the Biden immigration policy.

 

What does that say about America in the 21^st century?   We really do not know.  Is the MAGA movement the slippery slope to authoritarianism?  Is this, as Putin thinks, the decline of the American world order?   I like to think not, judging by worse things we have come through as a nation.  Civil War, Great Depression, World Wars I and II, Viet-Nam, the Cold War etc. etc. 

 

People who fear authoritarianism are correct to do so.  Authoritarian bent leaders select lackeys and knuckleheads to serve in the government because they have nothing else to recommend them, save the leader, and will be completely loyal to him, or lose their jobs.   Trump learned his lesson about having people smarter than he is around him.  Dimwits do not write books trashing the boss. Kim Jung Un has similar hiring habits but says “you’re fired” in a less salubrious manner.

 

Trump’s cabinet picks so far with the perhaps the exception of Rubio, are not serious.  They are intended as a loyalty test for Republican senators.  Previously, the loyalty test was simply saying the election was stolen.  Now it is whether an incompetent dunce, no matter how unqualified, can pass confirmation muster and perhaps to determine which GOP senator will be relegated to Trumpian purgatory for not following the leader.

 

For those who forgot how chaotic Trump’s first term was and voted for him because they did not like the Biden administration, are you scared yet?   Stay tuned.